Centre students have conducted research on and off campus and interned all over the world in government, private industry and non-profits, offering the critical thinking and creativity skills they have cultivated while on campus.

Hoping to share these experiences with a wider audience, Mindy Wilson, assistant director of the CCPD, described how she developed the idea for this project.

“Because our students are participating in amazing internships and research, I wanted a way to showcase those experiences,” she explained. “I saw that one school was using Tumblr to spotlight their internships in a pretty limited way, so I approached the Centre Communications Office to help me imagine what we could do to make something like this more dynamic—visually and beyond.”

Now that the CCPD has launched the site publicly, Wilson aims to have students use the platform to find possible internship and research avenues during their Centre career.

“I hope that this resource helps current students find opportunities through what our past students have done. I also hope that current and prospective students can see the wide variety of internships and research opportunities based on—in types of experiences, geographic locations and majors—that our students have the opportunity to participate in,” she said. “I want our students to dream big and be inspired by the students who went before them.”

The Spotlight’s emphasis on images sets it apart from the sites that other colleges have built, making its posts attractive and engaging.

“I love the photos of our students, which really shows what they did or where they did it,” Wilson noted. “I also love the searchable tags—students looking for a particular place, major or career field can easily search what other students have done.”

In the future, the Spotlight will serve as an effective resource for students to connect professionally, communicating the diversity of their internship and research experiences.

“I would love for it to become a robust platform for internships and research and for students to submit their experiences to be included, whether they are receiving credit or not, funding or not, to share what they’ve done,” Wilson concluded.